Tag Archives: heartbeat

Step Away from the Computer…and Go Out with a Friend

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Having strong social relationships is good for your health. Studies on men have found that those who have multiple friendships are less likely to suffer from heart disease. While not clearly verified by science, it could be that having friends and an active social life reduces stress, which in turn is good news for your heart. To find out more about stress and how you can easily detect and manage it, check out http://www.sweetwaterhrv.com. Beat Healthy!

Eat That Chicken!

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Eating chicken, other types of poultry and some kinds of fish—specifically the dark meat portions—may help to protect women with high cholesterol from developing heart disease, according to a study done by the Langone Medical Center of New York University. The magic ingredient is taurine, found in dark-meat poultry and some fish. The study of more than 14,000 women found that those with high serum levels of taurine were 60% less likely to develop or die from congestive heart disease. Who wants the drumstick?

Heart Attack: It’s a Family Affair

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A recent study confirms what we probably knew already: the tendency to heart disease runs in families. An international study of about 30,000 adults showed that having a parent that had a heart attack in their 40s or younger made it two-and-a-half times more likely that their offspring would have a heart attack. The risk is six times higher if both parents had heart attacks before age 50. (See http://www.everydayhealth.com/heart-health/news/heart-attacks-are-all-in-the-family.aspx for more info on the study.)

While genetics may be a determinant in heart health, the good news is that lifestyle can help to combat the genes you were handed at birth. Regular exercise, good nutrition, lowering stress, and reducing weight can all help to keep your heart working well. A key vital sign to heart health (and stress) is heart rate variability. To download a short PDF explaining HRV and stress, go to http://beathealthy.com/education/stressandhrv.pdf.

HRV: The Vital Sign Your Doctor Never Mentioned

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Heart rate variability (HRV) is a critical vital sign that can predict a number of different disease states, including heart attack and probably recovery from heart attack—but it’s not one of the things your doctor measures (at least our doctor doesn’t). You know your weight, blood pressure and cholesterol levels. Why don’t you know your HRV levels? To download a short PDF explaining HRV, go to http://beathealthy.com/education/hrvbackground.pdf

Make Stress Sit Up and Beg

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Tired of stress running your life? It’s time to take the upper hand! You can use SweetBeat to monitor heart rate variability (HRV) to reduce your overall levels of stress. If you monitor your HRV on a regular basis, you will soon start recognizing recurring stressors such as commuting or listening to the person in the next cubicle complain.  You can use SweetBeat’s Relax screen to reduce stress in real time. You can also change your exposure to stressors—OK, you still have to commute, but you could listen to music through earphones rather than to the complainer next door.

Over time, as you become more adept at stress reduction, you may find that your overall HRV is higher, indicating lower stress levels. You might even have to reduce your SweetBeat setting for stress sensitivity to compensate for the improvement in your body’s response to stress!

Change Your Brain, Change Yourself

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Sometimes we hear people say, “That’s just the way I am,” as though they had been fated to be a certain way, and there’s nothing to be done about it. Nothing could be further from the truth!

“Neuroplasticity” is a term that describes the brain’s ability to change structurally and functionally in response to the environment. Once scientists thought that after a critical growth period in youth, the brain became static. We now know that the brain is capable of change throughout life. We can change in response to injury, when the brain reroutes functions to work around physical damage. And we can deliberately create change, as happens when we learn a new language or how to play the guitar.

This means that for all of us, the ability to change what we know, how we feel, and what we do IS “just the way we are”!

Am I Having a Heart Attack, or Am I Just Healthy?

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When we explain that heart rate variability (HRV) is the variation in timing between heartbeats, and that the higher the HRV (the greater the variation), the more resilient and healthy you are likely to be—well, that’s confusing. Aren’t irregular heartbeats a sign of atrial fibrillation?

In atrial fibrillation, the heart beats too fast, or too slow, or irregularly. In any of these cases, however, the heart is beating inefficiently, causing poor oxygenation and other problems. The key is that the heart is beating abnormally, caused by a problem in the heart’s electrical system.

HRV is created by the normal tug-of-war between the body’s parasympathetic and sympathetic nervous systems. The differences in timing from one beat to the next are in terms of microseconds. High HRV signifies low stress and robustness because it shows the body is highly responsive to minute changes in its internal and external environments. Low HRV is a sign that the body is tired, ill, or stressed, and therefore no longer as quick to respond.